In the autumn of 2009 a few dozen people travelled to London to mark his one-hundredth birthday celebration and to thank Nicholas Winton. The group themselves were mostly all in their seventies or eighties. But this was no social trip. It was a journey of gratitude. They came to thank the man who had saved their lives: a stooped centenarian who met them on the train platform just as he had done in 1939, seventy years previously.

Nicholas Winton was a twenty-nine-year-old stockbroker at the time. Hitler’s armies were ravaging the nation of Czechoslovakia, tearing Jewish families apart and marching parents to concentration camps. No one was caring for the children. Winton got wind of their plight and resolved to help them. He used his annual leave to travel to Prague, where he met parents who, incredibly, were willing to entrust their children’s future to his care. After returning to England, he worked his regular job on the stock exchange by day and advocated for the children at night. He convinced the government to permit their entry into the country. He found foster homes and raised funds. Then he scheduled his first transport of child refugees on March 14th 1939, and accompanied seven more over the next five months. His last trainload of children arrived on August 2, bringing the total of rescued children to 669.

On September 1st, the biggest transport was to take place, but Hitler invaded Poland, and Germany closed borders throughout Europe. None of the 250 children on that train were ever seen again.

After the war Nicholas Winston didn’t tell anyone of his rescue efforts, not even his wife when they got married. [Over 40 years later] In 1988 she found a scrap book in their attic with all the children’s photos and a complete list of names. She prodded her husband to tell the story [and afterwards she secretly contacted a popular TV programme called, ‘That’s Life’: The presenter, Esther Ransom, sneaked the unsuspecting Nicholas Winton into the studio and then revealed his story to the world.]

The grateful group of people he rescued includes a film director, a Canadian journalist, a news correspondent, a former minister in the British cabinet, a magazine manager, and one of the founders of the Israeli Air Force. There are some seven thousand children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren today who owe their existence to Nicholas Winton’s bravery – and who remember him with joy. (He died in Slough in 2015, aged 106.)

Show the following YouTube clip: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_nFuJAF5F0

Source: Max Lucado, 2010, Our Live Your Life, Thomas Nelson Publishers: Nashville Tennessee, USA, p.15-16